


going home again

by DrowningInStarlight



Category: Original Work
Genre: Curses, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Linear Narrative, Other, Time Loop, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29491335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningInStarlight/pseuds/DrowningInStarlight
Summary: Sometimes, when the two people you love most in the world are fated to destroy both you and each other, the only way on is through.
Relationships: OC/OC/OC, Saffie/Alec/Sam
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	going home again

**Author's Note:**

> oc posting on main once again! 
> 
> title from the eponymous song by this way to the egress.

When the sword appears, it’s all over. Saffie knows it. She can hide it, throw it away as thoroughly as she can, and there will still come a morning when she wakes up and find Sam with bloody hands and a distant expression on their face. She doesn’t blame them for it, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Sometimes, occasionally, it’s Alec, but his face is never distant. It’s always wrecked and blood streaked and tear stained, and she can never decide if that’s better or worse— 

She never remembers picking up the sword herself. Maybe that’s for the best, but it still feels like a theft. She never asks the others, so maybe it’s just a lie. Maybe it’s all just a lie. 

\- 

“Don’t find me,” Sam pleads, as they’re backed up to the concrete wall of a basement with no lighting, the screams echoing down the empty lift shaft in front of them. “If you don’t find me, maybe this won’t happen to you guys too. Maybe you can just—” 

“It doesn’t work,” Alec says hollowly. “We tried it. You drowned in the middle of the woods somewhere, they never found who did it. I died alone—”

“Stop,” Saffie interrupts. “Stop, Alec, what’s wrong with you?” 

“Sorry,” he says, but she shakes her head, reaches for his hand. 

“No, it wasn’t you. I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just—” 

This time, they didn’t even find the sword. That makes this one of the good runs. One of the good runs, because they’re together, holding hands at the end, before the blood and the dark arrives. But it’s still… 

-

It always feels like there’s something missing. They have a good life, Alec and Saffie, a home, laughter and warmth. But there’s something missing, something neither of them know how to address. They look for it, without acknowledging to each other or themselves that it’s what they’re doing, but they don’t find anything. Saffie can’t even describe the shape of it. 

Sometimes, she feels like there’s something watching her. She coughs up blood into the sink, and washes it away before anyone can see it. Alec keeps a diary, goes through them so fast that it’s staggering. They aren’t secret, just diaries of their lives together, but they always make Saffie feel sick when she reads them. She thinks they make him feel sick, too, but he never stops. 

“Just a habit,” he says. “Old habits die hard, or whatever that saying is.” 

Saffie laughs, and buys him pretty notebooks for his birthday. 

They find what they’re looking for in the park. Well, they find two things, Alec kicks over a log and beneath it is a sword, perfect and pristine and utterly, utterly incongruous with the mud and grass around it. He goes pale, and says “Why do I know this?” 

The sword doesn’t cause this. Saffie doesn’t know anything, Saffie knows that much. “Wake up,” she says, “Wake up, Alec, wake—” 

-

She never remembers. Alec does, she thinks. She catches him looking at them both with a lonely expression on his face, chewing on his lip, and when she questions him he shrugs it off. She never remembers, that is, until it’s far too late, until the darkness is curling under the door and she isn’t sure which way is out. The memories, also, spell the end. 

\- 

They meet Sam in the park, when they run after Alec to give him back his wallet that he dropped on the path. Something in Saffie recognises them instantly, the way their jacket doesn’t quite fit, the way their teeth are crooked. They exchange phone numbers right there on the path.

She doesn’t remember what happens when they get home. 

\- 

The sword doesn’t cause this. It’s just a symptom of the blood and the darkness. Saffie wonders if she, too, is just a symptom of the blood and the darkness, but if she is then that means Sam and Alec must be too, and she doesn’t believe that. Not when Sam kisses her so gently, when Alec takes her hand in his. 

\- 

“Please,” Alec says. “I know this sounds— sounds crazy—” 

Sam picks up one of the diaries, flips through it. “It does a little,” they say diplomatically, “But…” 

But there’s a truth that rings horribly, horribly true in his words. Saffie knows they all feel it. She picks up a diary, dated fifty years ago. The handwriting is familiar and sickening all at once. 

“Alec, where did you get these?” she asks. 

“I left them for— for me,” he says. “It’s a clue. I think I leave one for myself every time, something to explain, something I’ll find because I’m me.” 

“This is my handwriting,” Sam says, looking up at them both quickly. “It’s your diary, Al, but you stop writing after a day in June, no explanation. Then it’s just me, then it’s just… empty.” 

“I call it a curse,” he says. “Not— I mean, in the diaries. We all do.” 

“What do we do with this?” Sam asks. 

“I don’t know,” Saffie says, and Alec echoes her. “I don’t know.”

-

She can see them across the ruins of the city, Alec with the sword— his sword, this time— held easily in one hand. She’s running, but she won’t make it. She never does, and the sword means the end. Sam is standing before Alec, their hands raised, slowly, carefully approaching him. She can’t hear what they’re saying but she doesn’t need to. Sam talks people down gently, firmly, with loving words, promises. Alec isn’t going to listen. 

They all know that. Sam doesn’t look away, regardless, and Saffie can’t get there in time to prevent the way that Sam sinks to their knees on the ruined tarmac and closes their eyes. The sky burns, and she can’t breathe. She stops, choking, and softly mirrors their movement, the torn road stinging like broken glass as she drops to kneeling. 

She doesn’t see the end, and she doesn’t remember waking up. 

\- 

Alec lies between them in a bed that’s too small for three. Saffie’s head is resting on his shoulder, Sam’s lying on his chest, and the moonlight filters in through the curtains. No one asks for apologies for things they don’t remember. 

“Try again with me?” she whispers. 

“Yeah,” Sam whispers back. 

“If you’ll have me,” Alec says. 

“We will," Saffie tells him. "You know we always will."


End file.
